Security was heightened Friday at all Hannibal public schools and at the Bank of Hannibal, 3817 McMasters Ave., following a pair of phone threats. No incidents were reported at either location.
The initial threat was called in to Marion County 911 overnight, according to Lt. James Hark of the Hannibal Police Department.
“We received an unspecified threat against the schools,” said Hark. “It was not even a specific school. No specific time or place. It was very generic.
“Once we received that we evaluated the extent of the threat to see what we had. We felt, just based on what we had so far, it would be best to notify our school resource officer and have him notify the school administration first thing this morning (Friday) to make them aware that we received a threat. It was unspecified, but yet we wanted to make sure that they were aware. The school officials evaluated the nature of the threat and acted as far as their protocol.”
Because a specific school was not mentioned initially, all schools were locked down, according to Superintendent Jill Janes.
“If it’s a threat against one school, all of our schools go into heightened security,” she said.
Later Friday, a more specific threat was called in to the 911 center.
“This time they specified they were going to cause a disturbance at the high school and at the Bank of Hannibal at the same time, and then hung up. Still it was not specified a time or anything,” said Hark. “We did make a call to the bank and made them aware that there was a generic threat made towards their bank and for them to be on heightened awareness.”
The HPD dedicated a good deal of manpower to the security of the schools and bank.
“We responded by increasing our presence at the schools, having more officers present walking through the schools today. We also put our entire detective unit and narcotics unit out in the areas,” said Hark. “Overall, we responded by adding another layer of responders to more or less blanket the area to ensure there wasn’t anything suspicious going on.”
The school district did not rely solely on the HPD Friday.
“First, we locked all doors,” said Janes. “Then we monitored all doors to see who came in and who left. Then of course we had some security around campus to just monitor vehicles that arrived and left, so we knew who was on campus and who was in our buildings.”
Despite the lock down, field day went on as planned at the high school.
“Rather than letting the kids spread all over campus, we had them contained to Porter Stadium and we had monitors all around Porter Stadium, just watching people who should be there and shouldn’t be there,” said Janes.
No security incidents were noted at any Hannibal school.
“We got through the day fine,” said Janes. “Our job is to provide the best security we can for children and so we take any threat seriously no matter how small.”
Hark added that there were no problems at the bank.
The incident is not going to be written off by the HPD as a simple prank.
“It’s not something where we say, ‘It didn’t pan out so it’s over.’ We will actively investigate and seek out the individual responsible,” said the assistant chief, terming the calls “terroristic threats.” “I feel confident we’ll make headway in this. Even people who have cell phones are not exempt from being tracked down.”
